Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) is commonly used within the field of electronic chip manufacturing for the purposes of testing electronic components. ATE systems both reduce the amount of time spent on testing devices to ensure that the device functions as designed and serve as a diagnostic tool to determine the presence of faulty components within a given device before it reaches the consumer.
ATE systems can perform a number of test functions on a device under test (DUT) through the use of test signals transmitted to and from the DUT. Conventional ATE systems are very complex electronic systems and generally include printed circuit boards (PCB), coax cables and waveguides to extend the signal path of test signals transmitted from the DUT to a tester diagnostic system during a test session. Conventional ATE systems are better suited to capturing and extracting signals physically and transmitting them to a tester using, for example, microstrip transmission lines disposed on the surface of a printed circuit board (PCB), a coax cable or a waveguide.
The advent of high frequency wireless applications e.g., WiGig applications, however, requires the testing of DUTs that communicate wirelessly at multi-gigabit speeds, which is problematic for conventional ATE systems. WiGig enabled devices, for example, operate in the 2.4, 5 and 60 GHz bands and can deliver data wirelessly at rates up to 7 Gbits/s. The WiGig chips under test (or WiGig DUTs) can comprise microwave elements, e.g. patch antenna mounted on the bottom and top of the device. Typically, the DUT is moved during testing by a handler device, which secures the DUT via suction and physically places the DUT at the tester station. For a wireless application, the handler may, for example, move the DUT in close proximity and wireless connectivity with receivers on the test fixture.
For the patch antennae located at the bottom of the DUT (or WiGig chip), the receivers located on the test fixture can readily come into wireless signal reception with the patch antennae for testing thereof, e.g., for microwave signal testing. However, when the DUT contains patch antennae located at the top, this is problematic for testing because the receivers located at the test fixture may not be able to receive the signals for testing for any one of several reasons. For example, the receivers may be too far away from the DUT, the top patch antennae may be radiating wireless signals in a direction opposite from the receivers on the test fixture, or the handler electronics may be interfering with the signal reception.